Friday, 18 September 2015

Currency

oil on panel

With the
current refugee crisis sweeping Europe and the awful stories of people
smuggling in the backs of suffocating lorries this small painting I completed
the other night (above) seemed to possess a different and very present currency. Most
of my lorry paintings feature just the decoupled cab without any cargo, but I
like this painting and wonder whether it should be developed further.

I’ve
also been busy planning my exhibition at the Blue Moon Café in Sheffield by
making these little ‘maquettes’ on bits of old mount card of the café walls
from the dimensions and photos Cupola Gallery has sent me. It’s been really
important to plan it carefully in the end as apparently I won’t have much time
to install the work. I also want to exhibit some more accessibly priced smaller
works, so I have needed to decide which ones and get them framed. I’ve made a
few more small square lorry paintings to go with other similar pieces last week
too.

I’m also
struggling to price my work as the gallery takes a 50% commission on
everything: I would like to attempt to sell things and therefore try and price
them reasonably so that the price tag may appeal, and yet I don’t want to give
things away either. Any money I make will almost certainly be less than if I
was selling them on my own, but you can’t have it all ways. For me at this
stage, It’s more important that I am working with the support of a gallery so
that is a price I will have to pay for now. What with this and all the good
news about Jeremy Corbyn, it’s all taken up a bit of head space lately…